Learning to Cook: Grilled Cheeses (Everything But the Kitchen Sink Style)

Slowly, as a gift to myself and to M, I am teaching myself how to cook. (If you knew me, you'd know that this is definitely a process.)

Tonight, I decided to make grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup because that's my comfort food. And it's been raining foreverrr. I needed something to warm me up. So I poured me a pint glass full of muscadine wine (I am a southern girl, afterall.) and got started.

I love boring food. M, on the other hand, loves "complex tastes", whatever that means, so I went with something more fancy for his sake. 

Not only was there cheddar cheese in our sandwiches, but also, green onions, ham, and slices of home-grown jalapenos.

Home. Grown. HOME-GROWN. Hell yeah. Can't get more fucking domesticated than that!

One cut and two burns later, our feast was complete.

M: "I'll make a housewife out of you yet!"

Yeah, right.

Beauty Review: GlamGlow Supermud Clearing Treatment

So today, I'm going to try my hand at a beauty review. 

I'd seen reviews for this mud mask for months before I bought it. The reason why I waited was because it is SEVENTY DOLLARS normally. That's right. $70.

However, I found it on Amazon for a mere $30. The miracle of Prime, baby!

But anywho. This is the GlamGlow Supermud Clearing Treatment! It comes in this super snazzy white and silver container that feels really sturdy. It feels as if it is made of glass.

The point of this mask is to remove the oils and blackheads. (M: "You don't even have blackheads. You just have a spending problem." Me: "Shut your whore mouth.") There is all this technical mask mumbo jumbo that I could pretend to understand, but I don't. It goes on a dark charcoal, and you're supposed to put on a very thin layer. As it dries, it turns a light grey color. As you see in the picture below, there are going to be darker flecks as it dries. It's almost a solid color then.

However, here is the cool part. As it dries and sits for a while, little dark spots start to appear. That's where it is pulling oil out of your pores! Have you ever used one of those pore strips on your nose? Where you rip it off, and it pulls all the crap out (along with half of your skin)? They are so gross, but SO COOL. (Don't judge me. If you tried it, you'd understand.)

This is the same way. Seeing all those little grey spots make me feel like its working, and that is the best thing that you can find in a product, man. You can see it below in the picture of my nose. (Sorry for the TMI.)

When you first put it on, it tingles a little, like it has peppermint in it or something. There isn't a burn though. I have very sensitive skin, and it didn't bother me at all. 

Best of all, it was super easy to wash off. It's not thick in consistency at all in the jar, and when you go to wash it off, it returns to it's original state. It's pretty fantastic.

All in all, if you have Prime and some money for splurging? Buy this. Seriously. Especially if you have oily skin or blackheads. I wouldn't pay $70 for it, but its worth the $30. Pay for what you get!

May the force be with you,

DB

My Summer As an Elderly Lady Ep. 1: The Vegetable Garden

My summer started out like this:

I was ending a long semester of math classes in the city along with working two jobs. I adore said jobs, but they were wearing me out. So when I was offered a serving job at the breakfast spot that I'd worked the previous two summers, I jumped on it. I loved that place. The workers were fantastic, the food was great, and I'd get to work with the boytoy every once in a while. 

I started back work the Wednesday after I got home. Two hours into my shift, I was informed that we were going out of business on Sunday.

After a long exhausting week of working every day and mourning the loss of my favorite place (and two terrible weekend shifts full of hour and a half ticket times and angry old people), I was unemployed. Great.

Most teenagers twenty-year-olds would be like "Weeeeeeeeeeeeee! Summerrrrrrrrrrr!" I, on the other hand am no normal twenty-year-old.

I crunched the numbers of upcoming rent and tuition bills in my head and after nights of gameplanning and drinking and freak-out worthy crying, I found a shitty, minimum wage hostessing job at a local Mexican restaurant.

But before then? I had to come up with some way to entertain myself during the hours of 8 to 5 when the boytoy was at work. 

(I don't have a car...or a license. I just never got one. Phobias, man. Shut up. I'm working on it.)

Thus marks my transition into an old lady. I was stuck at home all day with nothing to do, so I started a quilt (which I'll talk about later) and a vegetable garden. 

My vegetable garden is my baby. 

I'm growing jalapeños, heirloom tomatoes, zucchini squash, and crimson red watermelons. Count on regular updates.

This is when  I planted the garden about a month ago. It's hard to see the plants because they are all babies. The jalapenos are in a row at the top, the tomatoes at the right, and the watermelons are all down the left. Honestly, I planted them all tooooo close together, but I didn't wanna tear up more of M's grass than I had to, you know?

Zucchini pre-blossums

Watermelons pre-blossums

My jalapenos grew from baby tiny peppers to real peppers in like two weeks. They are still only like an inch or two long, but they are getting there. M and I go out and check on them every day and the progress is ridiculous, man. I don't really even like them. I'm growing them for him, but man, I'm proud of these little suckers.

My tomatoes are growing slowly but surely. I have like six growing right now and several more blooms. M is dying to make fried green tomatoes with them, but these suckers are gonna grow all the way.

And this concludes my nerd fest for the day. I did grow up in the rural south. What do you expect from me?

May the force be with y'all.

DB

For starters...

I guess I will do the traditional 'Hey! Listen to me....talking about me!' post.

I'm DB, and as I say in the about me, I'm a twenty-year-old industrial engineering student.

For most of the year, I live in Midtown Atlanta with my roommate, A, and we spend our days just waiting for TLC Bride Day shows to come on. Well, that, and we work in a dive bar together, are in a service sorority together, have all the same friends...together. Essentially, we spend too much time together. Thank god we are different majors.

The rest of the time is spend in suburbia playing house with my boyfriend, M, and his cat, Cat. (He's notoriously creative.) Seeing as he works days, and I work nights, I spend a lot of time trying to entertain myself.

Thus my shopping problem. I love beauty supplies, hair supplies, craft supplies, etc etc etc. That, combined with my accidentally renewed Amazon Prime account, will be the death of my bank account. However, I hope to put all of my newly acquired stuff to good use.

This blog will be a mixture of beauty reviews, maybe some craft tutorials, and an overall story of misadventure in the life of a girl who is playing housewife before her time.

May the force be with y'all.

DB